[This is a graduate student paper from May, 1994. I think it once had footnotes, but they have long
since been lost, along with the original, non-web version of the paper. --mh]

Reason, Objectivity, and Goodness

by Michael Huemer

This paper will focus on my conception of the nature of morality,
which I call intuitionism. My conception is inspired in large
part by earlier intuitionists (Moore, Ross, and Prichard),
though I do not claim they would all agree exactly with
everything I say.

These earlier intuitionists were rather brief and did not
give much attention to objections against their views (for
instance, Prichard's entire consideration of objections to his
view can be found in one paragraph plus a footnote). So what I
intend to do below, by way of contributing to intuitionist
theory, is, first, to systematically state the tenets of
intuitionism; second, explain what leads me, and ought to lead
other people, to believe each of them; and third, most
importantly, respond to the main, obvious objections to the
theory.

I. The 'is-ought problem'

Intuitionism is mainly a second-order theory, that is, a theory
about what morality is and how we know about it (if we do),
rather than a theory stating directly what we should do. First-
order intuitionist theories tend to be bland and perhaps
unsatisfying, if they even deserve to be called "theories", for
reasons that become clear once the second-order view is
explained.

Since we have this moral language and we frequently at least
believe various things to be right or wrong, it would seem
primafacie that there are such things as moral
values. In order to understand why meta-ethics is interesting
and what the numerous competing meta-ethical theories are trying
to accomplish, one has to see what is problematic in the relation
of morality as such to 'descriptive' (i.e., the rest of) reality.
The puzzle has both a metaphysical and an epistemological aspect.

The metaphysical problem is fitting moral values into the
scientific world-view. In the twentieth century, while most of
us philosophers consider ourselves adherents of a 'scientific
world-view', we think that science teaches us that the world is
composed out of physical particles (maybe fields too) in physical
space-time, which obey certain laws of nature. Our world was
generated out of the Big Bang (probably), and we were created
through spontaneous natural evolution. To this view of the
world, moral values seem 'queer'; they are utterly unlike
anything else in the world, they have a non-physical existence,
we have no way to account for how they were created or how they
could influence the course of events; if they are supposed to
have causal powers, then they must produce violations of natural
law; and if they don't, then a serious epistemological problem
arises.

I have tried to give this supposed problem a faithful and
forceful presentation, in spite of the fact that I personally see
little in it, and would find it difficult to elaborate it any
further.

The epistemological problem is linked, in that it too, I
think, has roots in 'the scientific world-view'. (By "the
scientific world-view" I mean to refer to a certain world-view
that is widely supposed to be scientific, not one that is
actually scientific.) This is the problem of how, even if there
are moral values, we can possibly know of them. For, in the
first place, we cannot directly perceive them (nor can we know
them by memory or introspection, the other modes of direct
empirical knowledge). In the way that we can just see redness,
feel heat, or hear sounds, we cannot see, smell, hear, etc.,
rightness. In the second place, most of the (interesting) moral
principles we have are not merely true by definition, so cannot
be verified by analysis of concepts. Third, as the popular
wisdom has it, no purely descriptive facts can ever entail a
normative proposition, so we cannot deduce moral principles from
perceptual evidence. And fourth, we cannot infer them
inductively from perceptual data either, at least according to
traditional theories of induction.

About this last point one could elaborate considerably,
given the numerous theories of induction in existence, but to be
brief: inductive inference in conformity with 'the uniformity
principle' ("the course of nature is uniform"), or anything at
all like it, could only take one from descriptive premises to
other descriptive conclusions. Since we can never perceive a
moral value in a particular case in the first place, it would not
be possible to obtain a moral conclusion by any sort of
generalization on particular observations. Nor is it easy to see
how a moral conclusion could arise by inference to the best
explanation either. The claim that something is good or evil
hardly seems ever to be an explanation of why we are seeing what
we are seeing. The only way I can imagine an attempted inference
to the best explanation going would be to explain some human
behavior by reference to our moral beliefs, which in turn are
explained by actual moral values. But that, of course,
presupposes that we have another, independent means of
identifying moral values, which is just the problem. It could
not be the case that everybody, in general, acquires his
knowledge about morality solely by inferring it from other
people's manifestations of moral knowledge.

More generally, since moral principles are supposed to be
necessary truths and inductive conclusions are generally supposed
to be metaphysically contingent, a moral conclusion just couldn't
result from induction.

So now the problem is this: We cannot acquire knowledge of
morality through perception, induction, deduction, or conceptual
analysis. Yet these are the only means of knowledge we have (at
least, so the popular philosophical wisdom dictates). So where
are these moral judgements of ours coming from?

II. Claims of intuitionism

Moral intuitionism, as I conceive it, comprises the following
several claims (some of which are obvious; some more controver-
sial).

1. Moral values are objective. That is, they really exist, and
are independent of observers.

I have discussed this issue at length elsewhere and do not
wish to repeat myself (at least not very much), so I will just
review briefly two general reasons for this opinion. First, and
most importantly, I think it is essential to our common sense
conception of morality. When we contemplate or discuss moral
issues, we normally experience ourselves as exploring a subject,
debating matters of substance, and trying to make the correct
judgements about them. Nor do we think that our obligations
(etc.) depend on our or anyone's beliefs about them. We do not,
for example, think that one way to solve all the world's problems
would be for everybody to get together and agree not to consider
anything bad anymore. We don't think, for instance, that one way
to eliminate all oppression would be for a sufficient number of
people to say, "There's no oppression." Therefore, we think that
the evil (and of course the same would be true of good) exists
independently of what observers say or think. And I think that
one always ought to assume that things are the way they appear,
until they can be proven otherwise.

Second, moral objectivism (like objectivism in general)
seems to be entailed by the law of excluded middle and the
correspondence theory of truth, along with a couple of what seem
equally obvious observations about morality:

(1) There are moral propositions.
(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded
middle)
(3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true,
rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad.
(Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their
view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some
moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")
(4) So some moral judgements correspond to reality. (from 2,3,
and the correspondence theory of truth)
(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)

I don't know if a typical subjectivist would try denying (3), but
if so, then to resolve the dispute, what we have to do is weigh
the plausibility of the most plausible moral judgement there is
(since he claims it is false) against the plausibility of
whatever argument he produces (assuming he has one). For
instance, suppose that the most plausible moral judgement you can
think of is "It is wrong to torture people just for the fun of
it;" and suppose that the subjectivist claims that this is not
true; and suppose he claims it on the basis that the existence of
moral values is incompatible with logical positivism. Then what
we have to ask is: Which do we find more plausible, that it is
wrong to torture people just for the fun of it, or that logical
positivism is true?

This is just an example of the sort of difficulty the
subjectivist or skeptic will get into, which convinces me that no
argument against objectivism could possibly discharge its burden.

2. Moral knowledge is synthetic, apriori.

This is just to affirm what we have already said above.
Moral knowledge, if there is any, can't be empirical because,
first, moral values are not perceptible; second, moral
propositions are generally necessary, whereas empirical knowledge
is generally contingent; and third, it doesn't seem possible to
construct any kind of inductive arguments for moral conclusions.

Now, of course there is an empirical element to most moral
judgements. For instance, it is in part empirically that I know
that Stalin's activities were bad. I didn't know apriori that Stalin had millions of people executed. But
that that sort of activity is bad is an apriori judgement.

Similarly, of course there are analytic moral judgements --
for instance, "Goodness is good." But the point is that most
moral judgements -- the ones that people bother talking about,
such as "People have a right to life" -- are synthetic. Since
all this is generally admitted, there is no need to elaborate.
The next three claims clarify the notion of 'intuition':

3. Moral knowledge is acquired by the exercise of a certain
mental faculty.

I base this claim on the fact that it is the only
alternative to two other views which I each reject. The first
would be that moral knowledge is implanted in us innately. I
deny this because it's hard to believe that newborn infants have
a conception of morality, and, moreover, I introspectively
observe myself to form new moral judgements and change moral
judgements spontaneously all the time.

Also, I do not believe that innate knowledge is in general
possible. Traditional a priorists usually seem to assume that if
nature implants a bunch of (true) beliefs into us, then these
ought to be considered knowledge. But once we stop to ask, we
know that's not sufficient for knowledge. If I acquire a belief
by a hypnotic suggestion, then, even if the belief is true -- and
we can add, if we like, that the hypnotist is always careful to
only implant true beliefs into me -- that belief does not
represent something that I know, because I am not
justified in believing it. And innate moral beliefs
seem to me to be no different. They would be things that we were
caused to believe but had no reason to believe.
And what reason is there for thinking that, if our genes (or
whatever) were to implant some moral beliefs into us, they would
be the true ones?

Finally, the number and variety of moral judgements we can
make about different things and situations convinces me that it
must be a general faculty that we exercise and not merely the
consequences of a few pre-given principles. The innateness of
moral knowledge would only be plausible, I think, if there were a
fairly small number of principles that we based the rest of our
judgements on. But in spite of the fact that moral philosophers
have tried for the past two thousand years to list such a set of
principles, no one has succeeded, and every comprehensive moral
theory that has ever been articulated -- except intuitionism --
is subject to well-known counter-examples -- that is, cases in
which the moral verdicts it delivers are markedly counter-
intuitive. This shows at least that none of these theories does
justice to our moral consciousness.

Note that I, of course, admit the faculty of moral
judgement to be natural and innate; what I deny is that moral
knowledge is innate. By analogy: no one claims that
perceptual knowledge is innate; yet of course we admit that the
capacity for perception (especially, sense organs) is
natural and innate.

The second alternative to knowledge acquired by a faculty
would be that there is no moral knowledge. But this would be
very implausible in view of the first point we made above
(objectivism). I don't know of anyone who has thought that moral
values are objective but we don't know anything about them. This
view would, again, run contrary to our common sense conception of
morality -- surely we know whether mass murder is good or bad.
Notice that skepticism here would imply not only that we don't
know it's bad, but that we don't know whether or not it's good --
so it might be good. Some skeptics might try to avoid this
consequence by denying that there is any goodness (hence denying
objectivism, that is), but, as we are here considering the
epistemological problem, it's hard to see how they could defend
their knowing that claim. That is: if the problem that
is raised is how we could have synthetic, apriori knowledge of normative ethics, I suppose it is
equally problematic how we could have synthetic, apriori knowledge of meta-ethics, and the claim that
there is no good or evil in the world is of this nature. A
consistent skeptic should deny he knows whether there are any
objective values, besides not knowing what things are good if
there are any, and for the same reasons -- so, again, there might
be goodness, and it might, for all we know, be that Hitler,
Stalin, and Ghengis Khan were the best men in history. After
all, values are imperceptible. I leave it to the reader to judge
whether he thinks this is the case.

4. Moral intuition, and the claims we know by it, are rational.

Moral intuition is not supposed to be a special, quasi-
perceptual faculty, a sixth sense, nor a kind of feeling. Moral
intuition is an exercise of reason. I note that I also believe
in mathematical intuitions, metaphysical intuitions,
psychological intuitions, and even physical intuitions -- and
that all of these are exercises of reason in the same sense, and
differ from one another and from ethical intuition simply in the
subject matter to which intuition is applied. Since it will make
some people feel better to reflect that moral intuition is not
unusual but is just like several other uses of our intellect, I
will list examples of these.

As mathematical intuitions, take "1+1=2" and "the shortest
path between any two points is a straight line". As a
metaphysical intuition, "The number of planets in the solar
system is a contingent matter." As a psychological intuition,
"Other things being equal, conscious beings will want to avoid
pain." As physical intuitions, try "Forces cause motion" and
"Physical causes are local; there is no action at a distance."
Finally, as a moral intuition, consider "Torturing people just
for the fun of it is wrong." In listing these as intuitions, I
don't claim that all of them are true; intuitions are fallible,
just as perceptual experiences, inductive and deductive
arguments, and even conceptual analyses are -- just as everything
that human beings do is. The second physical intuition (no
action at a distance) isn't true, but I list it because a lot of
people have it anyway. (But the others are true.)

Now usually when I try telling people examples of intuitive
facts, especially intuitive moral facts, they try to argue that
the propositions are really not true for some technical reason.
For instance, if I say that pleasure is generally good, they will
say no it's not, because sadistic pleasure (pleasure taken from
harming others) isn't good. I don't think anyone can make that
sort of objection to my claim that torturing people for the fun
of it is wrong. But in case they do, I will say that this sort
of objection misses the point. Since in giving his counter-
example, the objector must rely on a moral assessment of his own
(e.g., sadistic pleasure is bad), he thereby demonstrates his
capacity of moral intuition, just as surely as if he had assented
to my original example. He then demonstrates the intuition that
his case is in fact a counter-example -- for if he didn't have
such an intuition, how could he know what sort of case to bring
up?

My reasons for holding moral judgement to be rational are
two. First, this coheres with my introspective experience. When
I consider a moral question I, at least, try to make a rational
judgement. And I think I sometimes succeed.

Second, only thus do I think our moral principles (that is,
the principles we actually hold) would have any authority (which
means, only so could they actually be moral). To explain why, I
have to discuss the concept of 'rationality'. There are some
people, perhaps most people, who talk as if they thought they had
a clear concept of rationality, such that it's clear that it's
different from morality, and such that it's at best problematic
whether it is always moral to be rational or rational to be
moral. Perhaps this only confesses my own stupidity, but I have
no idea what these people think rationality is, nor what they
mean by "morality". And if I were to be in one of these
situations in which reason and morality conflict -- or if I were
told I was in one (since I could never recognize it for myself,
not knowing what such a situation was) -- I would have no idea
what to do. Suppose I have a choice between act A and act B, and
God tells me that it's moral to do act A, but it would be
irrational. The rational thing is B, but unfortunately, B is
also immoral. I think I would be justified in demanding, with
some perturbance, "So what are you saying? Which one should I
do, A or B?" To further illustrate my confusion, in the hope
that perhaps someone who is less confused can help me, I'll
mention one of the philosophers who thinks his concepts of
rationality and morality are different and that it is very
doubtful whether they are coextensive. Samuel Scheffler in his
HumanMorality considers the question of
whether morality is 'overriding' or not -- a question whose
meaning is far from obvious to me. He says that the question is
whether it is always rational to be moral -- so in other words,
is it possible for rationality and morality to conflict? And the
understanding is that if they can conflict, then morality is not
overriding. Otherwise, it is. And this confuses me, because I
don't understand why this would be a test of morality's
being overriding, rather than a test of whether rationality is
overriding. And to anybody who is similarly perplexed, I suggest
the source of the perplexity is that a contradictory situation is
made the test of a tautological proposition. "Overriding" just
means "should always be followed". "Moral" means "should be
done". So the question is, in short, whether we should always do
what we should do. That's the tautology that is to be tested.
The test for it is to ask whether there could be situation in
which in which we both should and yet should not do a particular
action -- i.e., the action was both moral and yet irrational. If
there is, then we conclude morality is not overriding, i.e.,
sometimes you shouldn't do what you should do. I guess this is a
valid deduction.

Of course, Scheffler may deny this is what he means. But
his best explanation of what he means by "rational" is "optimal
from the standpoint of reason". Since "optimal" is a synonym for
"best" or "most correct", and I don't see what "from the
standpoint of reason" adds to this (could something be X and yet
not be X from the standpoint of reason?), I fail to see how this
means anything different from "should be done". And so I fail to
see how it means anything different from "moral".

I have so far failed to distinguish rational action from
rational thought, which is something philosophers usually do.
But I just implied that 'rational action' is the same as action
that should be done. Actually, I think there is a slight
difference. I suppose that "rational action" means action that
it's rational to think should be done. (This is pretty clearly
not, though, the difference that the people have in mind who
question whether morality is always rational.) This is different
since it is sometimes (but not normally) rational to think what
is not the case. So now let's consider what rational thought is,
and what's so good about it. I think one has to notice the
following facts in order to have the concept of rationality.

First of all, people can acquire beliefs in various
different ways. We can, for example, form beliefs by accepting
generalizations in accordance with 'the Uniformity Principle'.
We could also accept beliefs in accordance with the non-
uniformity principle ("The future will be different from the
past.") Or we could pick beliefs out of a hat. Or believe
whatever we hear on television. Et cetera. Although each of
these examples presupposes some prior beliefs of ours (e.g.,
about the existence of the hat or the television), that's not
essential. We must get our initial beliefs by some method or
other.

Second, some of these ways of getting beliefs have more of a
tendency to lead to the truth than others. Some methods of
belief-acquisition tend to result in false beliefs, and, although
there may be no method that always leads to the truth, some
methods tend to result in true beliefs.

Third, we can exercise a certain amount of control over how
we are forming beliefs. It is up to us, for example, whether we
believe whatever we hear on television, and we can choose to
suspend judgement rather than accept conclusions according to a
certain method.

Fourth, beliefs aim at truth, rather than error. When we
make judgements, we are trying form true beliefs. Moreover, it
is objectively good that we have true beliefs, for obvious
reasons, and especially in the field of ethics. If we know what
the right thing is, we are much more likely to do it than we are
if we think it is not right.

Finally, vaguely speaking, most possible beliefs are false,
and most possible ways of acquiring beliefs are unreliable (tend
to lead to false beliefs). For instance, if there are ten
different, incompatible comprehensive ethical theories (and this
is certainly estimating conservatively), then we know that at
least nine of them are false. So if we pick beliefs at random,
they will almost all be false.

As a result of all this, we arrive at the conclusion that we
need some method(s) of forming beliefs that is systematically
directed at the truth -- in other words, a method such that, in
general, when you use it you will probably acquire a true belief
rather than a false one. For if we don't apply such a method,
then we will probably have false beliefs, and we don't want that.
Now it could be doubted whether there are any such methods, but
since it is not my task to refute skepticism in this paper, I
assume that there are, and that we can recognize them. I
suppose, of course, that we can recognize them intuitively. And
the sum total of the ways of forming beliefs that we intuitively
recognize as leading to the truth we call "rationality" or
"rational thought".

Now some people seem to conceive of rationality otherwise,
perhaps as a following of a certain set of seemingly arbitrary
rules, such that it's possible to doubt whether rationality is
the best way to discover the truth. For instance, I suppose
there are still religious people who think that faith or some
other method of acquiring beliefs is superior to reason, and that
rationality is deceptive. These people, I would say, simply lack
the concept of reason or of rationality; they do not understand
what it is. They still have some of the intuitions the rest of
us have about what is or isn't rational, but they fail to
recognize the significance of these.

5. Moral judgement, at least in important cases, is direct and
unmediated.

In other words, when I have the intuition that it is wrong
to torture people just for the fun of it, I do not base my belief
that it is wrong on anything else whatever. The fact that
torture is wrong is self-evident and is not based on any argument
or any further evidence.

As far as I can tell, this claim follows from the
proposition that there is moral knowledge, just as some
analogous, more general claim follows from the premise that there
is any knowledge at all. For if we know some particular thing,
then there are only three possibilities as regards its
justification:

(a) it is infinitely regressive. That is, there is a reason for
it, and a reason for the reason, and then a reason for that, and
so on indefinitely.
(b) it is circular. That is, it is based on some chain of
reasoning in which something ultimately is supposed to (directly
or indirectly) justify itself.
(c) it is foundational. That is, the item of knowledge itself
is, or is based upon, a fact that is known directly and without
any argument or reason given.

And I take it that (a) and (b) are absurd. Since we have already
decided that there is moral knowledge, and these are the only
three logical possibilities, moral knowledge is justified
foundationally, just as all kinds of knowledge are.

Now it could be maintained in spite of this that moral
judgements are based upon non-moral judgements, so that no moral
judgement itself is immediate. Few philosophers would claim
this, since we are familiar with 'Hume's law' and 'the
naturalistic fallacy,' but I would not object to it. If someone
wants to say that I can derive the (value) judgement that Hitler
was an evil man from the (descriptive) fact (inter alia) that he
had eleven million people killed, I do not disagree. In fact,
contrary to the popular wisdom, I think that is a perfectly valid
deduction. The inference, "Hitler had 11 million people killed;
therefore, he was an evil man," is certainly not some kind of
simple logical error, such as would merit the name "the
naturalistic fallacy." Nevertheless, there do seem to be value
judgements which can't be said to be based on any descriptive
judgements, including the example I keep using: when one
considers the proposition that it is wrong to torture people just
for the fun of it, one has the sense that it is correct -- and as
strong a sense of this, I think, as we have of any fact. My
claim, then, is simple: this sense itself constitutes knowledge
of the fact that it is wrong to torture people sadistically, and
it is not based upon, nor does it need to be, any further fact.

6. First-order ethics:

I said before that first-order
intuitionist ethics tends to be rather bland. This is because
moral intuition is held to be a capacity or faculty
rather than a body of doctrine; so learning to be moral requires
a skill in its exercise, rather than a body of propositional
knowledge.

A typical intuitionist, myself included, will affirm that,
other things being equal, people should keep their promises, tell
the truth, avoid hurting each other, bring about happiness, and
do all the other things that we would ordinarily consider
obviously right. Thus, there are many different things we should
do. Most moral theories involve isolating just one or two of
them, but, I say, all of the things that we intuitively consider
to be right are primafacie (that is, unless
and until some special contrary reason be given) right. In the
event that some values come into conflict with each other in a
particular case, as happens all too often, what we have to do is
weigh them against each other in our minds, to see which we find
the stronger obligation in the circumstances. There
isn't any general formula, or algorithm, for this (at least not
as far as I know), but it requires a direct exercise of the
intuitive faculty in each case.

III. Objections to intuitionism

Objection #1: Argument from disagreement

The most popular objection to intuitionism, which is usually
considered to be decisive, goes like this: "What about disagree-
ment?" This single phrase seems to be sufficient for most people
to convey an obvious and compelling difficulty; yet the import of
it is far from obvious to me. Surely the argument is elliptical.
So let me try to spell it out explicitly and in more detail
before responding.

There are really at least two different arguments from
disagreement, and it's not immediately clear, when people make
the disagreement objection, which they mean. It's not clear
whether they are complaining that if intuitionism is true, then
there will be disagreements, which intuitionism gives no way of
resolving, and that's bad; or they are saying that if
intuitionism were true, then there would not be
disagreements, but there are. So let's consider these
separately.

Objection #1a: Intuitionism predicts disagreement

To some extent this is true. Individuals have different degrees
of intelligence, education and experience, bias, motivation for
finding the truth, and attention and time spent on any given
issue; and all of these factors affect their ability to form a
correct judgement. This almost immediately implies that they are
going to periodically come to different conclusions.
Furthermore, human judgement in general is inherently fallible.

If two people have divergent intuitive judgements, then I
recommend they try resolving the dispute by appeal to still
further intuitions. For instance, if I am disagreeing with a
utilitarian, then I might try pointing out to him some
consequences of utilitarianism that he might not have noticed,
and that I expect him to find counter-intuitive. If we are
disagreeing about some more specific issue, I can try describing
thought-experiments in which I expect us to have the same
intuitions, and then point out to him the analogy to the case
about which we were disagreeing. Finally, I can always test the
internal consistency of his belief system, and try to show him
how some moral intuition of his conflicts with another principle
that he believes. It's worth noting that all of this is exactly
what moral philosophers actually do, and, as far as I know, it's
all they do; and it makes perfect sense in an intuitionist
framework.

If none of this works, then perhaps the two individuals have
an irresolvable conflict. Unresolved disputes are unfortunate,
but a fact of life that philosophers, of all people, ought to be
used to. I hardly think the fact that I provide no algorithm for
resolving all of them constitutes a refutation of my view, since
we know that these disputes in fact exist and have always
existed, and since no one has ever been able to produce a method
of resolving them. On the contrary, intuitionism
explains the existence of unresolvable conflicts. If
some view predicts there shouldn't be any disagreement, then, I
would say, that view is thereby refuted.

I don't see how this objection is supposed to work against
intuitionism, as opposed to any other view. Is there some
alternative theory of ethics that does provide a way of resolving
all disputes? Should we expect one?

Objection #1b: Intuitionism predicts agreement

I think the idea behind this version of the argument from
disagreement is this: Suppose that moral questions have true
answers, and that people are capable of finding out what they
are. Then you would expect people to exercise their rational
faculty, and thereby come to know the truth. Since people would
be more or less coming to the correct conclusions, they would all
more or less agree. But yet we know that there is great
disagreement. Therefore, we must conclude either that there are
no true answers to moral questions, or that people aren't capable
of discovering them.

It stuns me, though, that, once again, this is supposed to
be an objection against intuitionism in particular, as opposed to
any other view. Is there some alternative theory of ethics that
is not open to the disagreement objection? I don't think so.
For suppose one has a subjectivist theory. Then one has to
confront the problem that so many people don't agree with
that. If values are subjective, and if we are capable
of knowing that, then how come so many people still think values
are objective? Wouldn't you expect us to all agree with
subjectivism? Similarly, if one is a skeptic, and holds that one
cannot know moral truths, then one must answer the question,
"Then how come so many people have the sense that they do know
moral truths?" There is no escape: whatever one's view is,
there are many people who don't agree with it. And I presume
that whatever one's view is, one thinks that it is true, and that
it's possible to know that. Even a relativist thinks at the
least that we can know relativism is true.

So the first thing to note is that if the argument is an
objection to anything, it's an objection to everything (including
itself, incidentally).

The second thing to say is that the level of disagreement is
probably exaggerated. There are some things we agree about and
some things we disagree about. People tend to agree that
courage, honesty, and compassion are virtues. And we agree that
it is wrong to torture people just for the fun of it. I would be
surprised if there was a society in which those things aren't
accepted. Whether you are impressed with the divergence or
convergence of moral codes all depends on which things you look
at.

The third thing to notice is that the state of disagreement
is hardly unique to moral philosophy. There is wide disagreement
in every area of philosophy, and about religion, history,
economics, psychology, cosmology, and the affairs of everyday
life. Yet this fact is rarely invoked to demonstrate that it's
impossible to have knowledge of any of these subjects, nor to
show that they are entirely 'subjective'. If one wants an
explanation of such disagreement, I would cite the factors I
mentioned before: people have different levels of intelligence,
motivation, bias, education, etc. If one wants a remedy, I would
say perhaps people need to be more careful than we have usually
been in choosing our beliefs, to reflect harder before accepting
a proposition, and take more trouble to aprise ourselves of all
the alternatives. This is consistent with intuitionism, and if
my objector finds it unsatisfactory, I should like to know what
other response could be appropriate.

If widespread disagreement shows anything, I think it can
only be taken to show that people have been careless and not
entirely rational in choosing their beliefs.

Objection #2: Argument from assumption

The second favorite objection to intuitionism consists in
calling all foundational principles "assumptions" and demanding
some reason for accepting intuitions. (This is most
popular among undergraduates, but more advanced philosophers put
it forward in more subtle forms.) If no reason is given, then
(the objector concludes) intuitions are merely arbitrary.

The notion that I need some reason for accepting that it's
wrong to torture people, that I do not yet know it but require
some 'proof' of the proposition, is such a bizarre and artificial
assumption that it's difficult for me to guess where it comes
from. I think that this objection can only derive from a
general, skeptical theory, which says that no fact can be known
unless derived from something else -- not, in other words, any
problem specific to moral philosophy. Since I have already
explained that the existence of knowledge, of any kind, alone
implies the existence of unjustifiedjustifiers, and it's not my business to tackle general
skepticism here, I won't spend very much time on the argument
from assumption. But let me make two short replies.

First, it is possible (to say the least) to doubt the theory
which says that all knowledge requires proofs, and this theory
itself has no basis. I imagine my objector and myself carrying
on a dialogue something like this:

Me: I know that it's wrong to torture people just for the fun of
it.
Skeptic: What's your reason for thinking that?
Me: Isn't it self-evident? Why do I need a reason?
Skeptic: Because if you don't have one, then it's just an
arbitrary claim.
Me: How do you know that?
Skeptic: Why, that's self-evident.

Or so I suppose it would have to go, since I have never been
given a reason for thinking that I needed a reason for
everything.

Second, if we are going to accept that we can know some
things directly, and that the mind is competent to make
judgements, then I see no reason for treating moral intuition
differently from every other form of cognition. When I look down
and see two hands attached to me, I accept that I have two hands;
and in any normal context, no further proof is required. When I
exercise my memory and I have the sense that I went to the
supermarket today, I accept that I did go there. Once again, in
any normal context, this is accepted as a datum, unless and until
it can be disproven. And if somebody says, "The shortest
distance between any two points is a straight line," we all have
the sense that that is obviously true. Although skeptics will be
disposed to doubt all of these, it is obvious that we could not,
in general, satisfy the skeptical demand for a proof of the
reliability of our means of cognition, as we would have
nothing to rely upon in constructing the proof. If then, I say,
we are prepared to accept (defeasibly) the data of perception, of
memory, and of introspection, then we may just as well accept the
data of intuition at face value, unless and until contrary
evidence appears. As far as I can see, intuition is in no way
different from perception that would justify making it a special
target of suspicion, and moral intuition is no different from the
rest of the uses of our intuition. And I think the terrain of
moral philosophy is poor ground on which to choose to contest
general skeptical issues.

Objection #3: Argument from scientism

The argument from scientism is the one that I brought forward in
section I, while exhibiting the 'is-ought' problem. I get the
term "scientism" from Peter van Inwagen, whom I might as well
quote at length, since I would otherwise say almost exactly the
same thing:

Scientism, as I use the word, is a sort of exaggerated
respect for science -- that is, for the physical and
biological sciences -- and a corresponding
disparagement of all other areas of human intellectual
endeavour. It hardly need be pointed out that
scientism is the primary ideology of our age. It
hardly need be pointed out that the illusions scientism
engenders are so pervasive and so insidious that it is
practically impossible to get anyone who is subject to
them to consider the possibility that they might be
illusions. (I hope the following disclaimer
is unnecessary: if I deprecate scientism, I do not
thereby depreciate science. To deny that Caesar is due
divine honors is not to belittle his generalship.)

I don't suppose that very many philosophers would expressly
admit to basing their views on scientism, but it is all the more
important to discuss because it is usually relied on only
implicitly.

It would be very difficult to actually argue that the
discoveries of modern science show that there is no such subject
as ethics. Exactly what experimental result does or could
possibly lend support to such a conclusion is hard to say. It
ought scarcely to be necessary to observe that the process of
discovering a great deal of new information about one subject
matter does not, in and of itself, subtract from our knowledge of
another subject; the success of one intellectual pursuit does not
refute the validity of others; and so, in particular, further
discoveries about the nature of physical phenomena do
not in and of themselves cast doubt on what we have previously
known about other phenomena.

Concerning the question about the causal powers of values, I
only believe what I think is common sense. Values don't in and
of themselves have physical effects, but our beliefs about them
certainly do (because they influence our overt behavior). Nor do
I suppose that our beliefs are a result of causal interaction
with values. Although some object that we can only know of
something if we interact with it, and thus it has causal powers,
I suppose that we know about values in the same way that we know
about mathematics, or metaphysics. Not many people will be
inclined to say that abstract (mathematical and other) objects
have causal powers to alter the physical world, nor that we can't
know about them. And in case someone is, it can at least be
noted, as a counter-example against the 'causal theory of
knowledge', that it is possible to have knowledge of the future,
which in this case certainly cannot be caused by its object. I
know, for example, that the sun will rise tomorrow, even though I
of course have not, as yet, interacted with or been influenced by
that event.

It therefore appears to me that there's little to the
supposed conflict of intuitionism with a scientific world-view,
except for a purely emotional-level conflict. Those who are
victims of scientism are prejudiced from the start against
considering any entities or claims that aren't discussed by
natural science, only because it doesn't fit with their attitude.
And this, we can only lament, is deeply unscientific of
them.

Objection #4: The plea for rules

The final objection that I'm going to consider has it that I
haven't given a satisfactory ethical theory, and maybe I haven't
really given any theory at all, because I haven't given a set of
principles or rules by reference to which one would be able to
decisively and unambiguously determine in each case what a person
should do -- and that's bad. In fact, nothing I have so far said
is logically incompatible with any judgement about any
particular action.

Let's suppose someone wants to know whether or not it's
permissible to have abortions (to take a popular, though
theoretically insignificant example). Well, even if he takes to
heart every word I've said so far in this paper, he still doesn't
have any answer. Either answer is consistent with everything
I've said. And so we would find with every controversial moral
issue. And isn't resolving such issues what a moral theory is
supposed to do?

The objection may go on to assert that to the extent that I
fail to give rules for resolving dilemmas (or for anything else
either), I must therefore really be saying that in such cases a
person should just pick an action arbitrarily, at random. For
what other alternative is there?

Against this objection, I make three replies. First, once
again, it is unclear that there is any alternative to my view
that fares better. To take my favorite foil, it is altogether
unclear what a utilitarian should say about abortion, capital
punishment, or any other controversial issue; for it is entirely
obscure whether the allowing of abortions, or putting criminals
to death, increases or decreases aggregate happiness. And to
take another example, it is still more obscure what a Kantian
should say. What is the 'maxim' one acts on in having an
abortion -- everybody should have abortions? Does prohibiting
abortion treat women as mere means -- or does allowing it treat
fetuses as means? And I wouldn't even know where to begin in
applying a Platonic or an Aristotelian ethics to the issue. My
view, on the other hand, at least has the virtue that it's
true. For when people argue over whether or not
abortion is permissible, we do not find them comparing utility
calculations, or else carefully trying to determine exactly what
the maxim behind abortion is, to see whether or not it would be
possible to will it to be a universal law. Either of these
procedures would strike us as artificial. What we actually do is
what the intuitionist says. We consider multiple,
different values and try to weigh them against each
other. Truly, I can not prescribe any sort of algorithm of moral
judgement, and this may be regrettable -- but it also happens to
be the way we observe things to be.

Thus, my second reply would be that the fact that
intuitionism provides little specific guidance in moral dilemmas
just does not in any way imply that it isn't true. And
if that's what moral theories are supposed to do, then perhaps
moral theories are in general false.

Third, I of course deny that an absence of general rules to
follow renders our decisions arbitrary. What I think it means
for decisions to be non-arbitrary is that they tend to accord
with moral reality, and in my view our moral values will -- at
least if conditions are favorable and we acquire them under due,
conscientious consideration -- tend to accord with what is really
right and good. Thus will they be non-arbitrary. What is
needed, then, is a reason for thinking that decisions could only
come to accord with the right and/or the good if they also
accorded with some rule, other than just the obvious rule "Do
what's right." This is also something I have said elsewhere:
The assumption behind the plea for rule-following must be that
it's not possible to directly discern what is morally
good; whereas it is possible to directly see what is a
correct following of a rule. For if I ask someone how I am to do
what is right, even if he tells me, "Follow rule R" (it doesn't
matter what R is), I can always repeat, "And how do I do
that?" And even if he manages to give me further rules
S and T, I can ask how I am supposed to follow S. It is obvious
he cannot give me an indefinite series of rules for following
rules, and so he must at some point suppose there is something
that I can just directly discern without further need of
explanation. Seeing that this must be so if we are capable of
doing anything, I do not see the objection to placing that basic
capacity right at the beginning -- to supposing, that is, that I
can simply discern moral values directly.

In other words, there must be some rules that I can
implement directly, that is, without doing it by means of
following some further rules. Why, then, may not the rule, "Do
what is right" or "Believe what is true" be of this nature? The
view that any action must be arbitrary unless it is governed by a
rule standing behind it is of a piece with the view that any
belief must be arbitrary unless justified by a reason standing
behind it. But each is equally quickly reduced to absurdity.

I now want to make a few general, concluding remarks about
intuitionism and what's good about it, because I don't think
other philosophers have given it its due. Intuitionism does no
more than try to affirm common sense. Everybody, when he
considers certain types of action, has the sense, the
intellectual judgement or 'intuition', that they are right. Some
of these judgements strike us prephilosophically as being as
obvious as anything is. Intuitionism allows that such judgements
are by themselves genuine items of knowledge, that they are
exactly what they appear, and are not based on some hidden,
unconscious reasonings or other hidden psychological processes.
Intuitionism should not require to be proved but is the
presumptive position that we should start with, the position of
taking our experiences at facevalue, just as
we ordinarily take our perceptions, memories, and other thoughts
at face value. Unfortunately, modern-day skepticism -- and not
only in philosophy -- is in the habit of assuming that only the
strange and counter-intuitive can possibly be right, and
accordingly almost every philosopher thinks intuitionism
obviously 'implausible'.

I have considered all the objections to intuitionism I could
think of off hand. The argument from disagreement is the only
serious one, that a professional philosopher should not be
embarassed to make. Yet it's rarely made explicit exactly what
aspect of intuitionism is under attack, or what the conclusion of
the argument is. As far as I can tell, the target of the
argument is the idea that human beings are capable of knowing any
philosophical truth; and the conclusion is that people are
irrational. For it is merely the idea that we have any sort of
capacity to know about ethics or other controversial subjects --
and not that this capacity is intuition -- that is important in
the argument. And if people were all rational, then one way or
another you would expect them to stop arguing -- if not because
they all discovered the truth, then because they realized that
they couldn't discover the truth. The proponent of the argument
from disagreement himself has no explanation of the existence of
continued disagreement.

This might sound like a mere tuquoque
response, but I am prepared to admit that people are frequently
irrational or overly hasty in making moral judgements, especially
when religions and personal emotions get involved. The only
thing to do about this is resolve to weigh intuitions more
carefully -- not to decide henceforth to ignore them
wholesale.